New Horizons
by MrChuckMan
Summary: When Gohan finds himself unable to sleep with a beautiful young girl in his arms, what's a guy to do?
1. Chapter 1

It was the dead of night in the Satan City residential area. Gohan laid in the bed of none other than Videl Satan. His eyes were fixated on the ceiling wondering how he would get himself out of this predicament. He was tired. Completely exhausted in ways that he never imagined were possible.

He looked down at the beautiful girl in his arms. His heart fluttered, but his brain wanted nothing more than for her to move somewhere else. Why did she need to sleep on him anyways? She had spent the entirety of her life sleeping without him. Why start now?

It wasn't fair he decided. First this young lady decides to completely drain his energy, then she decides that she can't possibly sleep anywhere else?

Sure. It was cute for the first hour, but he literally cannot sleep while she is there.

Maybe he could just shut his eyes and try to rest.

Yeah. That must be better than nothing. Right?

Right.

He puts his plan into action. Slowly, very slowly, he closes his eyes. It takes a few moments but finally his eyes are fully shut.

Finally. Peace.

This peace lasts for a few minutes. While he still can't sleep, he does seem to be having something of a dream. Just flashes of images that don't make any sense, but he finds them relaxing for some reason.

Then she starts to move around. His eyes snap open again.

He looks down at the girl and dimly sees her deep cerulean eyes looking right back at him. Can't a guy get a break?

Apparently not.

His wide eyes consider her groggy ones and he sees that she isn't fully awake. The last thing that he wants is for her to wake up again. He can't do it again. She's just too demanding when she's awake.

Briefly he wondered if Hercule had the same trouble with this girl's mother years ago.

Then he realized what a weird thought that was.

God he's tired he reflected.

Right then. Her eyes are still open. Drowsy, but open.

Pondering this for a few seconds, he develops a plan of action.

Moving his hand from its place on her side to her back, he begins to gently rub her trying to comfort her back into sleep. Seeing some moderate success, he attempts to increase his efforts. As smoothly as he can, he rubs her back and culls her back to sleep. It's working.

Now for the final nail in the coffin.

Ever so slowly, he raises his head and brings his lips down to her forehead.

One sweet kiss on the forehead does the trick.

Her eyes close fully.

Bringing his head back down to the pillow, he gives a sigh of relief.

He closes his eyes once more and finds what comfort he can. Sleep is still out of the question.

This lasted all of five minutes.

She's starting to move again.

Awesome.

He grunts in frustration and pulls out his phone. Loading in the browser he does a search for ways to calm a sleeping girl.

Narrowing his criteria, he finds an entire forum board of men complaining about his exact predicament.

Scrolling through the conversations, he feels some sort of kinship with his fellow man in that he's not the only one to have experienced this.

Finally, he finds his answer. Apparently, some girls can't sleep well without "white noise".

He'd try anything at this point. It's been hours since this started. He's getting desperate.

Finding the recommended application he scrolls through the list of noises and settles on "light rain"

Turning it on he brings the phone to sit on the bed next to his side.

The girl's face scrunches up. Her eyes open.

"Gohan! Turn that thing off!" He hears Videl's voice command him.

But the forum told him to be persistent. Seeing that this noise wasn't working, he tries to go to something else. "Rain forest"

"I'm serious Gohan! Are you trying to wake my father?!" He hears her harshly whisper.

 _Come on.. work! Just a few more seconds!_ After all, the internet had never been wrong before.

Eyes on the girl, her expressions are getting worse. Desperate, he scrolls through the list and accidentally lands on "Extreme thunderstorm with hail and car alarms".

His eyes bulge out of his sockets and he looks at the phone in horror as the loud unruly noise makes itself apparent throughout the entire mansion.

However. The internet advise prevails. She girl calms down. In seconds, her expression goes from one of discomfort and anger to peaceful sleep.

This might just work!

The advise did say after all that once you have the white noise going, you can pretty much get them to sleep on their own.

Exactly what he was looking for.

Feeling a bit brave now, he moves the girl so that she is fully supported in his arms. Not a hard feat for him to accomplish. Sure his strength may have gone down in recent years, but it did have its advantages.

Standing up, he places the girl back down on her mattress and leaves the phone laying next to her.

Success! Very pleased with himself he happily goes back to his self-designated side of the bed and lays down.

The entire mansion is still echoing with the sounds of lightning and car horns, but the girl is at peace.

Closing his eyes, he begins to fall asleep.

At that moment, Videl jumps on him and pounds his head in with a frying pan.

"ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME GOHAN! TURN THE DAMN THING OFF!"

From the bassinet at the side of the bed, little baby pan starts crying.

Videl's maternal instincts kick in and she goes to coddle her baby girl. The second she is in her arms, Pan falls asleep.

"Here Gohan, can you hold her for a bit? I'm exhausted and need some sleep." She hands Gohan the baby Pan and smashes his phone with the skillet. "And don't pull this noise dodo again. My father is nice enough to let us stay here for support and the least you can do is be grateful by letting him sleep!"

She roughly laid back on her side of the bed and little baby Pan cuddled with her daddy.

Gohan stood in the room for what felt like hours. He got tired of standing and laid back onto the bed with the small girl laying back on his chest.

Right back to square one.


	2. Chapter 2

8 weeks later.

Gohan was currently sitting in his living room. Laptop balancing on one leg, baby Pan on the other.

He was looking at the computer longingly. He really wanted to publish the next chapter of his story, but first he had to get it written.

Sure, he wasn't a professional author. He was a scientist. Hardly someone who should even be looking at a Microsoft word document. Not even his wife knew about his fiction exploits.

But fiction is a way to escape reality for a bit. He was tired. All the diapers, the screams, the hunger… all the things that give babies their bad stereotypes. At 23 years old, this was Son Gohan's life.

So there he sat. His story was coming along. Really it was.

In the lower corner of his screen, he saw a notification pop up. It was a message from one of his writing peers. Mr. Meha.

Yet another question about time zones.

Between the two of them, they were trying to wrap their heads around the concept of time zones. Despite the fact that the earth is undeniably round, combined with the fact that the sun shines light in one direction from a hundred million miles away, the sun seems to rise and set everywhere on the planet at the same damned times.

Seriously. Did someone use the dragon balls?

Who knows.

That's besides the point really. Gohan had larger issues to worry about. He was supposed to get this story out to Mr. Meha this morning.

Again, there wasn't anything official about this arrangement, but he still felt bad when he didn't hold up his own end of the bargain. You say that you're going to do something, you best do it.

Gohan looked down at his daughter in frustration.

Why did she have to look so darn cute when she slept.

And why did she have to sleep on his right hand. It was really hard to type with only one hand as it was, but he had to use his left hand too?! Ridiculous.

"WHAAAAAA! WHAAAAAA!"

Well, so much for this. Gohan took his free hand and closed the laptop. Setting it to the side, he have his daughter his full attention.

"What do you want this time baby girl?" He spoke out loud. He held her up over his head with both hands, and started lifting her up and down.

"WHAAAAA! WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaa…"

Looks like it was working. She was finally calming down.

He set her back down on his chest, and even managed to get both of his hands free to begin typing properly on his laptop.

For approximately one minute. Until Videl walked into the room.

"Hey Gohan, can you get her into her carseat so that we can go to your parents?" She asked.

Ah. That's right. Goten's birthday was today. Officially 13 years old.

Guess writing was going to have to be pushed a bit further back after all.

"Sure thing hun." He said, trying to keep any hint of frustration out of his voice.

* * *

Later that night, the Son family was returning home. The birthday party had gone off without a hitch, and Gohan was looking forward to the whole evening of possibility ahead of him.

A magical combination had finally been reached. Pan was asleep, and not on him for once. Videl was exhausted from visiting with his family, completely understandable, and made her way to bed.

This left Gohan alone with his baby girl once more. He looked at her for a moment, taking in her cuteness and proceeded to grab his laptop.

God. It felt amazing to get two hands back on the keyboard.

"mmmm. Waaaa. Gaaaaa."

He froze. She was waking up.

As a preventative measure, he shut down all of the lights in the room, and even went so far as to turn on some white noise. It hadn't taken Videl too long to come onboard the magical machine once she saw the results first hand. Granted, until that happened, she had crushed 5 more phones in the meantime.

This week, she seemed to settle with "extreme pouring rain". Loading it up, he tossed on his noise-canceling headphones as well. They didn't quite block everything out, but they were damned nice for the white noise.

It worked wonders.

Sitting back down once more at his reclining chair, he set back to work.

The second his fingers started to type, he heard it.

The loudest, wettest, most explosive shart he had ever heard in his life.

How in the world did this baby always manage to make such loud noises?

Questions for later.

"WHAAAAAAA! WHAAAAA!"

True to form, Pan screamed bloody murder. Sure, no one likes having poop in their pants, but be damned if she didn't genuinely think that she was going to die with a scream like that.

"Okay.. Okay baby. I hear you." Gohan said. Understanding that this absolutely needed to happen.

Mr. Meha would understand.

* * *

One diaper change later, Pan still refused to settle down. He was trying absolutely every trick in the book. She was snuggled up to his chest, pacifier was firmly in her mouth, and he was rocking her just as much as he dared.

Only one thing left to try.

Pulling out his trusty phone, he started up the white noise and immediately began to enjoy the benefits.

Just as he was putting his headphones on, as Pan was once again falling asleep, she did something completely unexpected.

"Da da.. da da"

Gohan froze.

Surely that must have been a coincidence, right?

Afterall, she's only 2 months old… there's no way that she should be speaking at all yet, let alone know exactly _who_ he is.

Nonetheless. The biggest smile that he had ever worn graced his face.

"That's right baby girl." He spoke with pure happiness "I'm you're daddy."

He closed the laptop and set to spend some quality time with his daughter.

Mr. Meha could wait just a little bit longer.

* * *

Whelp. This chapter didn't turn out quite like I wanted it to, but I hope you all enjoy nonetheless!

Also, a great thanks to Mr. Me2 for giving me some.. interesting?.. sure. Interesting ideas and conversations via the fanfiction PM system.

Also, I'd like to wish a big happy birthday to my sister! – Who's birthday coincides with the last possible day that Goten is thought to have been born. Today!

Cheers!

Edit: thanks to the guest reviewer that pointed out that I put Goten and Gohan's ages too close together. Glad you enjoyed the story!


	3. Chapter 3

10 months

Mr. Son sat in his living room. Legs crossed as he sat in the corner of his large sectional couch. He was working on his laptop to prepare the next chapter to go to Mr. Meha. He wore an ugly Christmas sweater with reindeer stitching, and a pair of black jeans to go with it.

Videl was sick today and barricaded herself in the bedroom as to not get baby Pan sick. While he was sad that he wouldn't be able to spend the day together as a family, he did look forward to the opportunity to venture into his long lost hobby. It's been a few months since he's been able to do any writing.

During the week most evenings are over by 7:00, and it always seems that either he or his wife always get caught late at their jobs. Which leads to them spending as much time together as they can on the weekends. But hey, life changes after you have a baby. It's only natural.

For the Son family, the changes were a bit more exaggerated than the 'normal' family. But hey. What was 'normal' anyways?

"PAN! No don't go over there!"

"Hehe"

"Come back to the floor Pan!"

"Gehehahah!"

Pan had learned to fly. At ten months old, just when most babies were starting to balance on two feet, his little munchkin had discovered how to fly.

Most 'normal' parents only had to worry about the things that were left out on the floor. Choking hazards such as pennies or lint.

Not so for the Son household. For them, blindes had to be taken down, pictures either had to come down or be reinforced with adhesive. Light switches now had plastic coverings. All wiring for the tv and computer locations had to be run through the walls.

For the most part, Pan was actually a pretty safe flier.

 _THUD_

For the most part… Luckily she had loving parents to make up for the rest.

Before she even had time to process that she had flown head-first into the ceiling, her daddy had already caught her in mid air and pulled her into his chest.

"PAN! Are you okay?"

She looked up at him with confusion in her eyes, clearly not understanding what happened, but smiled when she recognized who was holding her.

"Da da da da da da da da"

"Jeez baby girl. You sure know how to give me a heart attack."

Gohan lowered himself back to the floor, and Pan got restless in his arms. She squirmed out and launched herself towards her stuffed bear.

This gave Gohan just the idea that he needed.

* * *

Gohan was once again sitting on the couch. His pace was starting to pick up when he heard a door down the hall click open.

"Oh, hey Videl! How are you feeling?" He asked when his lovely wife walked into the room.

Her nose was still red, and she was dressed in green pajamas with a fuzzy red robe. She had a bowl in her hands, hinting that she was going back to the kitchen for more cereal.

She stopped to acknowledge her husband. As she opened her mouth to speak, something caught her attention. Looking up, she saw just how Gohan was entertaining Pan while he was playing on his laptop.

"I don't even know if I should be mad." Were the first words out of her mouth. "It's actually kind of genius. Ha chew!"

"Bless you... " he said, tossing over his handkerchief for her to blow her nose. "I thought it was clever."

"Thanks." She said, catching the cloth. "Just make sure she doesn't get dizzy."

She then left the room, and Gohan took a moment to look up and admire his handiwork.

Above him, Pan was flying around in circles trying to catch her pink teddy bear. Attached to its body was a rope connecting it to the slowly rotating ceiling fan.

* * *

Whelp. That marks the first words that I've written(on my own stories) for at least a few months.

Hope you enjoy!


End file.
